The bad and the ugly

...And let me say right off the bat that I just assume replying to my own sketchbook thread is the way to continue posting to it. If not, somebody please hip me to the correct procedure.

Also, Q. what is the quickest way to find my sketchbook thread when it is not near the top of the sketchbook list, like it is right now?
I'm telling you, I'm new here. I know almost nothing,
soon I will know nothing, but I'm still working up to it.

OK,
Messing around with a Wacom tablet and Painter9 last weekend I managed to spend 3+ hours on two drawings that look like they took about 10 minutes each, at best.

Exhibit A
I had The Cave in the DVD player and spent a few minutes making a crappy sketch of one of the heads on the movie menu screen.
maybe if I had watched a better movie...

so many problems...

Oh, but I was just getting warmed-up
for this:
the pose is based on some gal from met-art or femjoy (thanks figure drawing refrence thread).

I am particularly disappointed by the clumsy transitions from contour lines to areas of value. Trying to get the volume and shading on the front leg, thigh and back and the areas of reflected light in the shadows actually drove me to drink.

In my defense, this was my first half-assed attempt with the tablet, I completely forgot to use layers in the image (that probably didn't help me any), and the only brushes I used were the pencil, eraser and blending stumps.

I kept working on the second drawing long after The Cave and special features documentaries were over and I was aware of the hissing audio behind the menu screen looping over and over again.
I got to the point where I would draw in one improvement, blend it out, and try to get it back by erasing... which worked at first, but fter a while it seemed like I was slowly deconstructing everything that I was trying to build.

I cant remember anything about The Cave except what the creatures looked like and that almost everyone died. I think I expected it to be complete crap and nice background filler while I was working, but it might have actually been entertaining.
I'll have to watch it again, without drawing.
and I'll have to get on the tablet and do some drawing again without a movie playing.

But anyway,
I'm sure I'll figure out what all I'm doing wrong slowly and painfully over time, any crits, tips, advice, links to tutorials etc. are very welcome.

Thanks for looking in darkchild.
I checked out a bit of your sketchbook as well, very nice.

I've been collecting quite a few images of similar female subject matter for sketching as well (not quite as 'racy' though). I'm more interested in getting the variations on the anatomy down and a little less concerned with how hot they look.
Lately I've been looking real hard at pics that show definition in the connection of neck, collarbone and shoulders - just trying to figure out the nature of the way things work.

Aint nothing wrong with hot chicks, don't get me wrong, but the main thing is creating that illusion of believability on the page, and learning the anatomy.

- still a bit self-consious about working on drawings of a nekkid figures where someone might look over my shoulder.

Anyway, more pics coming soon, some abstract sketches I worked on yesterday and I'm putting the finishing touches on a couple of oil paintings as well.
...will post

The feet look great. What I think happened with the head was you forgot to sketch out the big areas first, like you did with the feet. You went right in to drawing and that is why the proportions, shadows etc don't look right. Maybe if you tried to break the head down like you did the feet you'd get better results? I'm no expert, but that what I think...

Those foot and hand studies are really something, they look great and i definately want to see more!

I guess i could help you with a few of your questions!

- To help see your thread, as well as other ones youre interested in, go up to "Thread Tools" at the top of the.. thread and hit the subscribe to thread button, thatll slap a blue arrow... somewhere near the thread name. Makes stuff easier to see. You can do that or favorite it!

- As for tablet n tone stuff, mull recently suggested i try using ~65% brush opacity as opposed to pressure sensitivity annnnd to keep my brushes big, this i found hard at first but i think i can see some result in doing so, to me theres more form there than a jumble of brush strokes.

And er, keep posting. You may want to stop yourself posting without posting art, could work as motivation to draw because you have something you want to comment on, i try to do that at least.

a strange thing happened...

Jackwhat: Thanks for the advice and tablet tips. I'm gonna try messing around with the opacity. And good point about not posting without art. And big thanks for the link!

Sochap: You are so right. Need to concentrate on measuring accurate proportions first, regardless of the tools/toys one is working with. Great observation on your part that I had totally missed.

Amazing how you can practice doing something and then immediately forget to apply it.
sad, sad, sad,
...must remember to think before I draw, at least for the representational stuff.

Here's a thing I've been working on for the last couple of days.It started as an innocent line based abstraction and I just let it build itself. I figure I'll do a couple more like it (based on line drawings that is) and use 'em as something to practice in Photoshop and Painter with.
It's a little different.

I'm thinking a good tentative title might be:
"Hole Nosed Ghost of a Wet Fingered Hot Foot with Smiley Face Mask"
Looking at it scanned I'm already thinking it might be more interesting with one big 'eye' showing through the holes in the head instead of separate ones...
anyway, it was fun, and a nice change of pace.

I've got a couple of oil paintings in progress, and i dug up some early photos of them.
I've been painting on & off for years but these are the first serious portraits that I've attempted of people I know.

charming daughter:
(eyes a bit too large and too far apart)

lovely wife:
I notice that her shirt got a little higher around the neck in the painting,
...prude that I am.

What are those geometric lines all over the place? I had been reading about ways of finding the "golden mean," in squares and rectangles, and figures out what is most likely a simplified version to try on both of the canvases. The golden mean is an classical method of dividing up a picture plane into harmonious 'ideal proportions.' I have oversimplified my definition and my attempt at measuring it out.

I just wanted to try to place the figure on the canvas in some kind of organized manner, not looking off center, to high, too low, too small, etc.

Crazy cool feet mang. Keep working on your faces - they seem to be getting pretty accurate, and the eyes are always a bitch to get positioned correctly. Good rule of thumb - the ends of the mouth'll line up with the mids of the eyes. Of course, that's from a dead on view, but you can compensate for turned heads. And don't be afraid to experiment with fleshtones when you paint - the beauty of oils is that they can best replicate the translucence of flesh. Use more reds. Color of blood. Nice little trick is to always put some red at the end of the nose.

I had some time yesterday to work on my daughters portrait, here are a few in progress shots, and what is almost the finished version:

This is where I started from:
the photo that I am working from is black and white, and I had it in mind not to do a full color portrait, but something mostly monochrome, in sanguine/reddish browns black & white.

Step two: after working up the hair and the background I took a look at a John Howard Sanden painting video and mixed up a little bit of 'flesh tone' ( cad red light, white, yellow ochre, and a touch of viridian), tried it on the neck, and it got way too intense.
It made me think of doing the whole thing in more natural colors, but I'm still not going for it.
The light was a bit funy when I took the pic. Some of the browns got washed out.

This is where I left off:
I tried to tweak the placement of the features on the right, the eye and the corner of the mouth need to line up better.
I ain't done yet.

Also, here is the finished painting of my wifey,

Thanks for the comments:
Sirio_Brozzi - I got a whole lotta mo',
Myxomatosis - I took you up on that 'red on the tip of the nose advice, its good,
katsgod - lately I've been making more of an effort to get the values down better. thanks,

Wow, you&#180;re very talented.
I hope there is comming more...keep it! *clap*
tha picture of the "making of...your wife" is very very great..The helpeines helped me a bit to imagine how to get the right body proportions *worship*thank you ^__^

An Artwork is the SEEABLE Succsess of the afford and experience of many Years...

new stuff

Biohazard16- thanks for the kind words. I'm trying to keep making progress everyday.

Here are some more recent sketches:

Bargue drawing of yet another foot. After blockig in the big proportions Iwent back at it with a pencil that was way too soft. I was too stubborn to find another pencil and ended up using a blending stump or the thing and being generally unsatisfied with it.

here are a bunch of things from imagination, just trying to loosen up
Placement on the page was kind of unfortunate for this one, cut off top of head

on same page as image above. I was really tempted to look at some anatomical reference for this one, but decided to see what I could do from memory. (the chest didn't quite work)

I finished this portrait twice

Yesterday I thought I was finished with this portrait, then I took it out into the sunshine and noticed the yellow ochre spots and some areas of shading (particularly on the forhead) that just were not working.
I'm just glad that I saw what was happening with the light.
I discovered that I had a little more work to do.

So, I went back at it.
This time, even in the sun, it looks allright.
This is only my second serious attempt at portraiture, and it took a long time (too long really).

Thanks Landel,
I checked out your SB. You know I dig your stuff. I'm gonna check out the MindCandyMan too.
There is so much to learn.

I've been working at this drawing business,
...took a look-see around at some other very impressive sketchbooks, got inspired and got busy.

I gathered up a few misc toys, scattered them on a piece of paper and started drawing them in ink, no pencils.
spent a couple of hours and got a shaky hand near the end of the session.
It was good practice.

Some heads from a fitness magazine,
(-inspired by the mighty Gaboartpage.) Placing multiple figures so they fit on one page is an exercise in itself, I'm working on it. Keep starting too near the edges of the page. Also, one word... 'structure.'

The Incredible Mentler did an interesting reverse master copy a little while back. I had to try it, and it hurt my brain.
My drawing is based on this sketch by Leonardo da Vinci

My version is a pitiful long-headed attempt:

proportion is enlongated (painful to look at now), I really should have spent more time on this joker and I tried to alter the direction of the hatching for a lefty such as myself. That was probably a mistake.
I also should have got a pen instead of a soft pencil
regrets...

I'm gonna get me some toned paper and a pen and try it again.
Comments & crits welcome
peace out

-Na

"It is like a finger pointing to the moon; do not concentrate on the finger of you will miss all that heavenly glory."
- Bruce Lee

hey nallen

thanks for ur post, and the journal will be updated in the week. i stoped by here earlier didnt get to post so im doing it now realy loving ur work **looks at the feet studies** love the portrait of ur daughter! keep posting looking forward to more

I got a li'l bit of sketching done on Sunday, then I had to go most of the day yesterday without access to pencil and paper. I missed it.
I'm hoping to get to the point where drawing every day is the rule and not the exception.
Got up this morning and got busy in the sketchbook for a frustrating, and strangely satisfying hour.

Here's my crop of sketches from the last few days:
Thought I'd better have a refersher on the skeleton and the nature of the way things works...
These are from a book called "Drawing From Your Head" I'm slowly making my way through it.

I've been going through an old fitness magazine and drawing the folks in it,
two gals, one young, one older, worked on each for 20 minutes of so.

I think this was a 15 minute sketch
(Damn. The scanner is more powerful that I thought, I didn't know I could set it to x-ray)

Three, 10 minute sketches, I tried to be loose but accurate and get the gesture and the whole figure down.
I need to get more accurate and faster...
I'm working on it.

Hey Darkchild, thanks for the encouragement, and for checking up on me. You have been kicking ass in your SB lately. I'm impressed.

ivy'sgrandkid, thank you too, you remind me that I need to get back to the hand and feet studies, they are hard and take a long time, but I know they are good practice.

-until next time...

"It is like a finger pointing to the moon; do not concentrate on the finger of you will miss all that heavenly glory."
- Bruce Lee

I am getting back in the habit of drawing regularly. It feels good. I'm starting to notice a certain irritability that comes from not getting my drawing in by before it gets too late in the day.

Started a new Bargue study, a hand
just geting going with the blocking in here.

I spent a good hour getting this figure down. trying to be more accurate, blocking things in... I have not yet figured out how to do this combined with more 'graceful' lines though.
working on this I remembered something I read in a forum here recently about visualizing the image on the page before drawing, I can't remember who/where I read it.
Then I had a flash of an interview with Bernie Wrightson (my hero) from a documentary called Masters of Comic Book Art where he said that most of the stuff he draws he imagines first, and when he can clearly picture it in his mind he draws it, and its just like he's tracing his mental image of it on the page.

I gave it a shot with a quick sketch of a crouching nude (a freebie from femjoy). Right from the start the angles and proportions seem to be a lot better, with a lot less redrawing and correcting
here it is
It might have taken less than 10 minutes, but I feel like there is a lot of important information on the page, and it didn't take very long to get started.

...now if I can just remember to think before I draw...

Mentler, thanks so much for checking me out.

Oh, I've been checking out the recent exploits of Darkchild, very nice stuff lately, on parchment paper too.
Here are some things I did earlier this year on canson paper (fancy colored drawing paper) using black and white:
using black and white charcoal pencils, got a little happy with the white on the head gear, and the lighting is funny in the image I was copying...
enough excuses.

This next one was done from life in prismacolor (colored pencils) again just the black and white. I started of with graphite and almost immediately regretted the 'shiny' look of the lines.

both of these jokers took a lot of time, and I tried to use the value of the paper as much as possible and draw only the stuff that was lighter (with white) or darker (with black) than the background

-till next time

Last edited by Nallen; July 5th, 2006 at 09:58 PM.

"It is like a finger pointing to the moon; do not concentrate on the finger of you will miss all that heavenly glory."
- Bruce Lee

That plant rocks! So does the statue. Great work. You are doing great on your figure studies. The young girl from the magazine is good, and that hand she's leaning on is superb. Your studies definitely shine on that. Keep up the nice work. I'll be checking back on your progress. Later!

I drew and painted on the computer, no scanning in of pencils, and I'm unsatisfied as usual.
But I learned a little...

Spent the day messing around with Painter9, my tablet and the covergirl from an old issue of Fitness Magazine.
I started with the pencil brush then switched to the the 'artist oils' brush (wet blender, pallete knife, etc) and it about made me crazy, but I worked through the madness...mostly

here it is: Step 1

Step 2 -after hours of working on it,

Step 3 -enough for today Oh, it's sad
Edit: I shrunk them just a bit from actual size... perhaps I'm working too small (100dpi, 600x800), it was tough getting at the pixels in the eyes & corner of the mouth.
I may have lost the battle, but I'm going to win the war!

advice???
(don't throw away my pencils and paper, right?)

I'm outta here

Last edited by Nallen; July 7th, 2006 at 12:11 PM.

"It is like a finger pointing to the moon; do not concentrate on the finger of you will miss all that heavenly glory."
- Bruce Lee